by Julian Rose
September 7, 2015
from
ZenGardner Website
Julian is an early
pioneer of UK organic farming, an international activist
and author. He is President of The International
Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside. Julian's
widely acclaimed book 'In Defence of Life' is available
in independent bookshops and internet sites as well as
via
www.julianrose.info |
visit 'Monsanto - A Multinational
Factory of Death'...
The term 'food chain' refers to the steps that constitute the
movement of food from its starting point in the field to its end
point on the fork. This incorporates processing and ultimate
consumption.
The food chain operates within a dynamic life cycle.
One which expresses the inseparable
interconnection between soil, plant, animal and man - and ends back
in the soil again. So that if any one element of this cycle is
poisoned or weakened, the other three elements must also be directly
affected.
When working at its optimum equilibrium, this cycle becomes a
dynamic wheel of health. Each link in it supporting and reinforcing
the other, resulting in enriched and balanced soil fertility and at
the other end, genuinely nutritious food. Nature doing the work and
the farmer acting in support of nature's flow.
Ecological agricultural systems try to follow this pattern - this
'wheel of health'.
They do so by returning all
biodegradable elements to the soil, including the manure which is
the by-product of farm raised livestock; and by rotating the crops
around the farms' fields. These constitute the most fundamental
actions, without which the cycle of health cannot be achieved - and
the food you eat cannot properly nourish your body, mind or spirit.
This is not, however, the way that most post industrial commercially
marketed foods are grown today. In other words, the foods that you
find in the supermarkets and chain stores of the Western World. Not
at all.
The great majority of these so called
'foods' are severely depleted versions of the real thing - and
usually toxic as well.
Why is this?
Because they fail to respect the fundamental law of the land:
return all biodegradable waste
matter to the soil and rotate crops to avoid a build up of soil
borne disease.
Instead, in a system mostly developed
immediately after World War Two, cereals, oil seeds, vegetables and
fruits are grown under conditions known as 'monocultures'.
This means using methods that don't
rotate crops and don't return animal wastes to the soil.
How then is the soil kept fertile?
It isn't. Commercial mass food production uses synthetic nitrogen to
make crops grow - not a fertile soil. And it uses chemicals to try
to destroy the diseases that build up in the soil, due to the lack
of crop rotations. Lots of chemicals.
They go under the headings:
-
pesticides (kill pests)
-
herbicides (kill weeds)
-
fungicides (kill fungi)
The emphasis on 'kill' should not
go unnoticed.
All these agrichemicals have military
origins, stemming from the munitions and nerve gas industries of the
Second World War, and subsequently put to use in agriculture
immediately after it.
The great majority of commercially grown fruit, vegetable and cereal
crops are sprayed with one or more of these war-stained chemicals
between three and eight times a year. Many crops are sprayed with
all three. They have been proved carcinogenic (cancer
causing) and are also associated with many other serious
health defects.
Virtually all supermarket foods come from large scale intensive
agricultural operations that utilize these chemical based systems.
They, like governments, are not
interested in small scale farming operations. They are interested in
their profit margins. The health of the soil, or those who consume
their produce, is not their priority.
Only ecological land management, often associated with time honored
family farming traditions, ensure that foods are responsibly
nurtured, processed and sold, usually locally:
Real Food.
The animals raised on
large commercial farms, as well as
on concrete 'factory farms' (most pigs and poultry) are fed on
compound foods made up from the the chemically raised crops
described above.
The majority of these compound based animal feeds are also
genetically modified, with ingredients made from GM soya and maize
leading the way.
Does that mean that virtually all meats, milk, eggs, fruit,
vegetables and cereals have chemicals in them? Yes.
Chemical residues appear in all these
foods. Sometimes at low levels and sometimes at high levels. There
are guide lines (industry and government) that try to set what they
call 'safe levels' of these chemical residues. But in truth, no one
knows what is safe and what is not safe.
Indeed, whether any level of toxicity
(chemical or GM residues) in foods, is 'safe'.
Eating poisons is not to be recommended. Eating DNA altered
chemically raised foods (GMO) is simply doubling the danger. And
that danger extends right through the living environment.
As chemical sprays and genetic
modification combine to kill everything that would normally grow
naturally in amongst the crops; as they do in the wider natural
environment:
-
the wild flowers (weeds to
chemical farming exponents)
-
herbs
-
rare grasses - as well as the
insects
-
bees
-
birds and bugs that feed on them
and on the living micro fauna in the subsoil
That is the true meaning of
'monoculture': a culture in which only one species is intended to
survive.
And that, my friends, is the position for virtually all foods you
will find on the supermarket shelf.
Due to the prevalence of these systems, some forty five percent of
the World's agricultural land is now officially designated as '
degraded' or 'severely degraded': the soil has died.
This figure is growing every year, as the huge corporate farming
businesses that supply the major supermarket and hypermarket chains,
increase their empires, driving the small traditional family farmers
off the land in the process.
A 'cleansing' that is supported by,
...and just about all governments and
major World trading blocks.
Okay, now you've got the picture of what goes on on the ground - I'm
going to tell you what goes on in the next phase: food processing.
So all these already denatured and toxic ingredients get separated
out and channeled into the food factories that produce the end
products that line the shelves of today's commercial outlets.
It is well beyond the scope of this
article to describe the thousands - if not millions - of processed
products that fall off the end of the production lines every day of
every year all around the world.
Instead, I will home-in in detail on
just one example which will act as a template for thousands of
similar items ubiquitous throughout North America and Europe.
So let's nail a typical mass produced bakery product shall we?
Travelling, as I and my wife regularly do, on trains between Poland
and the UK, I get plenty of opportunities to witness the latest in
easy to handle processed foods.
Although the difference between them has
shrunk substantially over the years, there are still some vaguely
distinctive factors about the,
-
Polish
-
German
-
Belgian
-
British,
... items on the menu.
The one I am about to describe - a
croissant - tries to make its provenance easily visible. No doubt it
is proud of its composition!
This croissant will be found by anyone who takes an overnight
sleeping compartment on many of the continental and UK train lines.
No doubt it can be found almost anywhere, so well designed is it for
a long life and easy handling.
So may I introduce 'KRISS' the happy croissant... with a caramel
filling.
KRISS, a kind of cyborgian cube
with a big smiling mouth and perfect white teeth, beams out from the
front of the plastic package.
And well, yes, there is something
particularly alluring about 'a melting in the mouth' croissant which
makes it hard to resist. This one, however, does not belong to that
particular genre.
Not one to normally indulge in such packaged products - especially
not before checking the ingredients, I decided to give KRISS the
once-over. The writing was just about visible, something not true of
many similar products that adorn the world of fast food consumables.
So here is what KRISS the happy croissant is inviting us to sink our
teeth into:
"Wheat flour (wow!), caramel flavor
filling 25%, sugar, partly hydrogenated vegetable oils, water,
skimmed milk powder*, egg yolk powder**, emulsifier (E475),
thickener (E461), preservative (E202), flavoring, margarine,
vegetable oils, partly hydrogenated vegetable oils (palm oil,
cotton seed oil, sunflower oil, emulsifiers (E471), soy
lecithin***, salt, preservatives (E202, E 200) acidity regulator
(E 330) antioxidant (E307), flavoring (yes - again), color
(beta-carotene), sugar, wheat gluten, yeast, emulsifiers (E471,
E472) flavoring, preservatives (E282, 270,E200) flour treatment
agent (E300)."
Bon appetite...!
* From
GMO fed cows.
** from GMO fed chickens
*** GMO product.
To all the rest add pesticide residues
and the miasma of synthetic, toxic substances that make up
'flavorings, preservatives thickeners, hydrogenated vegetable oils'
and more.
Wow KRISS - thanks! But how did they pack so much into you? You sure
do give us a lot for our money!
While this is obviously a long shelf life product (I wouldn't dare
call it a food) - don't think it is exceptional. No way, There are
thousands of such bakery products on the market. Many containing GM
soya - but never stating it - regardless of the fact that in Europe
processors are legally obliged to state the existence of GM
ingredients in commercial foods.
Watch out for bread too - the mass
produced commercial loaves have lots of weird and wonderful
ingredients in them that you wouldn't dream could be in something as
basic as a loaf of bread.
The great majority of the food industry is just that: an industry.
Just like micro chips and motor cars, it churns out so called
'foods' on factory production lines and packs them full of what are
essentially poisons.
But in small enough doses not to kill
you outright, just nice and slowly, so you don't actually notice
you're dying.
But believe me - you are - if your diet
involves the consumption of the denatured and toxic 'non foods' that
line most supermarket shelves. Foods which comprise the standard
diet for around 90% of Westernized societies.
Once on this treadmill, the next step is to spend the rest of the
food budget on pharmaceuticals designed to relieve your super
aggravated internal organs.
Yes, that's right,
Big Food and
Big Pharma are the best of friends
- and governments are not going to intervene, because the revenue is
just too attractive to consider imposing any restrictions.
Today's 'Non Foods' are so deceptively packaged that Edward
Bernays, the founder of modern advertising, would be proud of
them.
Unless you get wise to the reality you
may even believe you are eating something good for you! So take my
advice, give KRISS a miss - and all his millions of lookalikes. And
if you want to live, in the full meaning of that word, set your
sights on that which is supportive of a revitalized mind, body and
spirit.
Not just yours - but Gaia's - and the
entire cycle of life which supports and sustains her, both now and
for eons to come.
We all have two options available to us:
-
go in search of real food, real
farmers and a real life
-
or drown in a sea of pseudo
reality fake foods and a fake life, which will serve only to
fulfill the words of
Henry Kissinger,
"If you control the
food supply you control the people".
|